The Valley and the Mountain

January 26, 2016

“Silence. Three months tick by, slowly at first and then faster as time goes on. Some days are so long I feel I’ve done enough work for a whole week. Other times a week passes and I don’t even notice. I have avoided writing because I haven’t felt like there was anything good to say.

This is hard. Much harder than I expected. And I don’t know what to do about it.

November and December passed in some sort of strange time warp. Days lasted weeks and yet all of them blurred into one. Every day I wanted to go home – my home in New Zealand, a place where for the most part my life ran smoothly. I began to wonder what normal was anymore. I struggled daily with the fact that I love the people here, the children, the language, the culture, but I didn’t like my job. I must have said I wanted to give up a dozen times and I know there were weeks where I looked at flights home every single day.

People say “everything that could go wrong, did go wrong” and that was very much true for those two months. I was in a car accident, the other car broke down, another was impounded and I spent a terrifying few hours alone at the police station in the middle of the night. I witnessed two horrific beatings, the burning alive of a thief and two accidents that resulted in violent deaths. There were visa problems, staffing problems, friends who turned out not to be friends, half a dozen burst pipes (on half a dozen different occasions), rainstorms so big that all the windows leaked and the whole house flooded and many, many more things. Time has made some of them seem funny now, but they weren’t at the time. I could have dealt with it if they came one at a time – but they didn’t. It was day after day followed by week after week of more disaster.

And for the most part nobody understood. “Don’t worry, you’re just not in your groove yet.” “Oh all of those things have happened to me at some point or other.” “Haven’t you put all the dead bodies behind you yet?” “You’ll just have to get over it – that’s just what Tanzania is like.”

Being here is hard and I don't know what to do. I know that everyone has their problems, but sometimes it seems like life is easier in New Zealand. I want to give up and I only pray that God will give me the strength to stay."

It’s true. It is hard. Being in Tanzania this time has been a lot different to last time, a lot more difficult. There have been more questions and more doubts, more tears and heartache. I have found it hard, do continue to find it hard, to be on call to everybody all the time, no matter what time of the day or night it is. There’s never a time when somebody isn’t asking me to pick them up or drive them around or needing money or wanting a job interview or asking to talk to me about this or that. There’s never a time when somebody doesn’t need me. At times more than anything I have wanted to go home, simply to be surrounded by the people who love me for who I am, not what I do for them.

It felt like people were pecking away at me constantly, like I was giving, giving, giving all the time and that soon nothing of myself would be left. Some days it still feels like that. Other days I take it for the gift that it is. I am loved here. I am needed. I have purpose. I am blessed to have found something that I am passionate about. I feel like some people could live a whole lifetime and never find that.

Even in the midst of the difficult times here there have always been bright moments. We have a daycare that is completely chaotic, but also amazingly fun. There are babies to cuddle and toddlers to read to and nannies to joke with. I can eat as much chapatti and beans and plantains as my heart desires. Our manager is wonderful. Two-year-old Godfrey is the sweetest, smartest child, “Why are you wearing a hat inside Hannah? There’s no sun here.” Smiley little Ismail is almost five months old now and knows who “his people” are. I feel lucky to be one of them.

There’s my friends Amy and Malcolm who came to help for two months, who cooked dinner so that’s one less thing I needed to think about and who listened without complaining to my venting.

There are amazing thunderstorms in the late afternoons, cold watermelon straight out of the fridge and fresh hot bread out of the oven, evenings where I slosh through the mud in my new gumboots with a baby on my back and stolen moments to read a good book.  There are long motorbike rides through the mountains, sandwiches at TanzHands and weekends where Ashley comes to stay and we watch TV and eat pizza and talk about everything and nothing. There are early morning phone calls home and funny text messages from my sunshine girl Jill.

I’m learning to focus on those things, to cherish the mountain top experiences when I have them and to lean on God during the valley. Coming here has probably been the hardest experience in my life. It’s also probably been one of the best. God is so good.

xoxo,

Hannah